“You’ve been standing there holding that box for about five minutes.”
Oops. Okay. Having a complete blank-out wasn’t good. Plus, my back was going to hate me for it. “Sorry.” I hauled my ass into the house. I sat the box down beside the door. I stood up, popped my back, and looked at her.
“How much more is left in the truck?” Tabby asked.
“Just your bookcases.”
###
After we got the truck dropped off at the U-Haul place, Tabby and I went home, got cleaned up, and I threw a frozen pizza into the oven. I knew I didn’t feel like going out. My back ached and I really wanted to just take it easy.
“Jimmy?” I looked up. Lucy was standing in front of me.
“What’s up?”
The kid seemed paler than usual, if that was possible. She was shaking.
“I’m scared,” she said.
Oh, shit. Lucy saying she was scared was not a good sign. In fact, it scared the shit out of me. Her saying she was scared of something was like Tabby saying she didn’t like chocolate. “Scared of what?” I asked.
“I have a bad feeling.”
Okay. Bad feeling. Check. I wished I could hug the kid. Jesus. A bad feeling coming from her meant that something was seriously wrong. But what? I couldn’t imagine God giving her soul to the Devil. So, it had to have something to do with that darn phone call.
“What’s the feeling about?” I asked.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t know yet.”
Great. I figured I might as well put it out there. Maybe I was wrong, just maybe. “Are we going to Arizona?”
Lucy looked up at me, her eyes wet. “You need to go.”
Needing to go and wanting to go were two different things. Needing meant there would be consequences I wouldn’t be able to deal with if I didn’t go. It figured. If I had any luck at all, it was bad.
“Does it have anything to do with that flask?” I asked. I’m not even sure why I brought that up. Something was linking it all together in my brain.
She shrugged and left the room. I blinked. Seriously? Sometimes, I wished she could communicate better, but it wasn’t her fault. She was only six after all, but there were times that I wished she was older. Times like this.
###
It was going to be interesting to break it to Tabby that we were going to have to haul ass to Arizona. I knew she was exhausted and it would be better to wait, but Lucy’s bad feeling had me nervous. Did I want to go to Arizona? No. I wanted to stay home and get settled and try to find a job.
Plus, I really didn’t want to be responsible if there was something big and bad that was able to take Lucy from me. Or do something bad to someone else. It wasn’t like I was experienced at this. Doing one exorcism did not make me an expert, and I still didn’t know enough about the whole process. I had no idea how I could make heads or tails of any of this. There was too much that was weird. I’d tried searching online for “Marker,” and all I got were Sharpie advertisements. It wasn’t like Lucy was walking around with a black check mark on her forehead.
“Is everything okay?” Tabby asked when she walked into the kitchen.
“No,” I said. The beeper on the oven went off. I grabbed a pot holder out of the drawer and got the pizza out of the oven.
She sat down at the table. “Okay?”
“Lucy is scared.” I waited for that to sink in. The last time Lucy had been scared was when the demon had her in his grip, and she still hadn’t talked about it to me. And, as far as I knew, she hadn’t talked about it to Tabby either.
“Okay. So, she’s scared. She’s six.” Tabby leaned back in her chair.
I grabbed the pizza cutter and attacked the darn thing. Sometimes Tabby made stuff hard. If she would just think for a minute, it would be clear. “This isn’t what you think it is. Lucy spends a lot of time watching scary movies for God’s sake. If she’s scared, it’s bad.”
“Did she say what she was afraid of?”
I gnashed my teeth together. I loved Tabby, I did, but sometimes she really made me practice my patience. I shook my head. “She said she had a bad feeling about Arizona.”
“And what’s in Arizona?”
Now, that was a question I could answer. Sort of. I shrugged. “It’s where the flask came from.”
Tabby glared at me. “What flask?”
Ah ha! My turn to be irritating. “The weird one I got in the mail the other day.”
“So, someone sent you a flask in the mail.”
“Yeah, I guess.” It sounded stupid. I knew that. But it held some significance. It was a sign of stuff to come.
“Who?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know. There wasn’t a name on the return address.” If I’d have known who sent me the damn thing, I would have Googled them, and I wouldn’t be freaking out like this.
“Jesus, Jimmy. The weirdest shit happens to you. Did you open it?”
“What? The package?” Why wouldn’t I open a package addressed to me? Well, I guess if I were someone important like the president, I’d have a minion to open it for me. That way, if it had a bomb or something, they’d be blown to smithereens and not me.
“No, doofus. The flask.”
I paused. I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d been so relieved that there was nothing scary in the box that I took it at face value. “No…”
“Where is it?”
I pointed to the box on the floor next to the garbage can where I’d left it.
She got up from the table and picked up the box. She brought it over to the table and sat back down. After sifting through it, she looked up at me. “Did you throw anything away?”
“No. There wasn’t a note or anything.” All there had been was that bubble wrap. Now I kind of wished I would have saved it so I could play with it, but whatever. I knew that wasn’t what Tabby meant.
Tabby shook the flask. There was a faint sloshing sound. “If this is blood, I’m going to shit myself.”
“You won’t be alone.” I didn’t want it to be anything gross or creepy. I had had enough of that with Lucy. Please, God, let it be something normal.
She unscrewed the cap and held it up to her nose. She jerked back. “Jesus Christ!”
“What?” I’ll admit, I was afraid her nose was melting off her face or something.
She looked at me and rubbed her nose. “Worst rot-gut whisky I’ve ever smelled.”
I did my best not to laugh. “Who would send me bad whisky?”
“You’re asking the wrong questions. More like, who would send you a flask with these initials?”
She had me confused. What did the initials have to do with anything? “Why?”
“I think this might have belonged to Doc Holliday.” She turned the flask over in her hand, looking at the etching more closely.
“Nah.”
She nodded. “Yeah. See, the silver has a fait bluish tint to it. Not like today’s silver.”
“Couldn’t that be faked?” Not that I knew much about silver. Most of what I knew had come from Tabby, and that was all about the magical properties of the stuff, not antiques.
“No. The silvering process is different today. Now, the engraving could be more recent, but I doubt it.”
Heh, it being old didn’t exactly instill confidence. “Why?”
“Because, why would someone send you a fake flask to get you to come to Arizona? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Nothing makes sense.” And it didn’t. A hang up phone call about a sort of exorcism and a box from Arizona that had an old flask in it had no connection, as far as I could tell.
“That’s the damn truth, but there’s something here. Lucy’s feeling notwithstanding.”
Of course there was. “Fuck me.”
“So, when are we going to Arizona?”
“When I can get a flight, I guess.” I was so not looking forward to this trip. I could just imagine myself running around and asking people on the street if
they’d heard of Father O’Malley. I’d be in an institution before the day was out.
“What are you going to use to pay for it?” she asked.
Yeah. That had been what I’d been trying to ignore. I wasn’t all that far off from being broke. My steady job had gone bye-bye. After Lucy’s body was put in the hospital, and all the loose ends were tied, up, I just didn’t have a good enough excuse. I thought I’d probably be able to pick up another job, but the bottom had fallen out of the market for graphic design just as badly as everything else. My unemployment was going to run out in a couple of months, and even then, it wasn’t enough to pay for everything. My savings were shot. It just wasn’t possible.
I served us both up a piece of pizza. “Guess we aren’t going to Arizona.”
Tabby drummed her fingers on the table. “I do have a credit card.”
I grabbed her hand. “No. We aren’t going to do that. You don’t have a job. I can’t have you ruining your credit.” And I wasn’t about to let her go into debt for me when it had to stand on something this flimsy. It wasn’t worth the risk.
“So, what are we going to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
###
If I said I slept, I’d be lying. I didn’t want to do badly by Lucy, but I couldn’t make myself financially destitute either. If I were a more religious man, I’d probably decide to take the “God provides” frame of mind. But, even as a priest, I was more realistic than that. God gave me a brain. It was up to me to know how to use it and figure out how to support myself.
If I had to go get a job at McDonald’s, I would. I had Tabby to think of now. Sure, she’d probably get a job, but I wasn’t about to put the whole monkey on her shoulders. I wasn’t that type of guy.
If only my “profession” gave me a stipend or something. Yeah. Great wishful thinking there, Jimmy.
###
“Jimmy?”
I woke up. Tabby was standing over me. I looked at the clock. It was a little after seven a.m.“What?”
“Did you go somewhere last night?”
I looked around the room, nothing was out of place. What was she talking about? “No… I came up to bed when you did, remember?”
“You have to see this.”
She grabbed me by the hand. I threw back the covers, got out of bed, and followed her downstairs. She was moving so fast that I missed a step and somehow didn’t go down.
“Sorry,” she said, let go of my hand, and continued down the stairs.
I caught up to her in the dining room. She paused in front of the table.
“What?” I asked.
“Look.” She pointed at the table. On the table was an iPad. I didn’t own an iPad.
“What the fuck?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It was sitting here this morning when I came down to make breakfast.”
I knew there wasn’t a magical iPad fairy. Something was up. “Did you ask Lucy?” I asked.
“She’s been strangely quiet this morning.”
Hmm. Usually, that meant the kid was involved, but I knew that wasn’t the case here. Lucy was a spirit. That meant that, yeah, she could go through doors, but there was no way she could make an iPad pass through a wall. Of course, this hadn’t been the first time something had appeared at random. When I had to get the demon away from Lucy, the vestments I needed to do the exorcism had somehow appeared in my suitcase. I hadn’t packed them, and Tabby hadn’t been with me when I brought my suitcase to Sorrow’s Point.
I picked it up and pressed the “on” button. Maybe I could find out who the damn thing belonged to. Burglars took your stuff out of your house; they weren’t supposed to leave their stuff. When it powered up, a video suddenly began.
This guy was sitting at an ornate gold desk. The walls in the background were a weird shade of yellow like you’d expect stomach acid to look like.
“Mr. Holiday,” the man said.
The dude who was on the screen was this old priest, dressed in white robes. He was not unlike my old mentor with bright white hair, but this guy had an Italian accent.
Tabby was staring over my shoulder.
“Welcome to the Order of Markers. Fate works in mysterious ways and all that.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” I said aloud. More like I wanted to know who broke into my house. Why couldn’t they have knocked on the door, said, “Hey dude, we want to help,” and handed me the sweet iPad? But no, I had a random technological device sitting on my dining room table.
“Eventually, you will need to come to Rome for your official training, but for now, your services are needed. We apologize for not introducing ourselves earlier.”
He pulled up the robe on his right arm and displayed the inside of his wrist. He had a mark too. It was hard to see, but I could swear it looked exactly like mine.
“Sometimes it takes awhile before we know another mark has made itself known. I’m sure you’ve been alerted to your next project, so I’ll keep this brief. If you haven’t noticed, there should be a credit card taped to the underside of the device you are holding. Think of it as your corporate account. Use it for anything to do with your work.”
I looked at Tabby. She stared back at me. Maybe wishes really did come true. But I was really feeling uneasy about all of this.
“On the device, you will find forms to fill out so we know where to deposit your salary. Welcome to the Church… again.” He chuckled, and the screen loaded up the normal home screen I’d seen on iPads at the mall. Like he said, there were a few files that looked like the documentation I needed to fill out. I turned the thing upside-down and, sure enough, there was a credit card.
I pushed the “too good to the true” thoughts from my mind. This was something I’d needed. I wasn’t going to mess it up. “Guess I don’t have to look for a job after all.”
“Fuck, Jimmy. Fuck. This isn’t right.” Tabby’s eyes were practically coming out of her skull.
Part of me wanted to laugh. I’d never seen Tabby this freaked out before, except for when we battled the demon together. She looked like a cartoon almost. It was kind of cute. Finally, she readjusted herself and glared at me.
“What are you?” she asked.
A rhinoceros? Yeah, it was a good thing she couldn’t read my mind. I’d be so dead. “A marker, I guess.”
“It’s like you’ve just entered the mafia or something.”
I couldn’t argue about it. She was right. “I kind of have. Think about it. Secret organization who gets their funds via secretive means in order to accomplish various agendas and be a front for the big boss.”
She blinked. “I think you just described the Church.”
I patted her on the head. “It will be okay.”
“You sure about that?”
CHAPTER THREE
MR. ROBOTO
Yeah, I knew Tabby had a point. I should probably be more concerned with the fact that someone had broken into my house to deliver an iPad. It wasn’t like that was any sort of normal church behavior, but I knew that there were other forces at work here too. And, well, the big guy never did things subtly, not as far as the records went. I mean, who would notice if suddenly all the crumbs in the house were gone? God needed more blatant shows of his power.
The guy on the video had a mark, and he was also a priest. Part of me wanted to trust him just because of that. Still, I knew better. Not all priests were good. And I’m sure me no longer being a priest had some members of the Order grumbling. With that swanky desk and all, there was a lot of money involved, and money made people mean.
All of this didn’t make me nearly as uncomfortable as Lucy and her bad feeling. I probably should have been more concerned about the organization I just joined, but I felt no ill will from them, so it wasn’t on my agenda. Lucy, however, she was a different matter. It would be best to focus on the fact that I didn’t know what Lucy’s feeling was about exactly. I thought it had to do with Arizona, but what if I was wrong? I mean, I’d asked her,
but she could be wrong too.
“Jimmy?” Tabby asked. She was standing there looking at me.
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
I looked around. Nothing was out of the ordinary. “I’m just here, thinking.”
“Yes. Think away. You know about all of this weird crap going on. What are we doing? Are we going to stay here awhile and unpack, or are we going to go on your weird quest?”
Good question. But with this credit card, I was tempted to just go for it. I mean, I’d never been to Arizona, and the worst thing that could happen if I found nothing was that Tabby and I would have a vacation. Even I laughed at myself over that. No way was it going to be that easy.
Her phone rang. “Yeah, Mom?”
This couldn’t be good. Tabby didn’t exactly get along with her mom very well. On the best of days, it was strained. The woman wasn’t exactly sane, which made things worse.
“He’s never done that before,” Tabby said. She tapped the table with her fingernails. “Okay. Okay. We’ll come get him.”
She hung up. “We have to go to Huntington to pick up Isaac.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“He bit Mom.”
I snorted, and she glared at me again. I stopped myself from telling her I didn’t blame the cat, but I also knew better than to let this out of my mouth. It was better for me to stay neutral. “Is she okay?”
“Yeah. She just can’t keep Isaac anymore.”
“I’ll go get the keys.”
###
We were quiet in the car. There really wasn’t much to say. We had to drop everything because Tabby’s mother was a pain in my backside. There were times that I wished that Tabby would just wipe her hands of her mother, but that’s the funny thing about love, I guess. Sometimes, you love people that treat you like crap.
Lucy “sat” in the backseat. I knew now not to ignore little things, and animals sometimes could see and sense things humans couldn’t. But I’d be crazy if I didn’t worry. Lucy, after all, had killed her own cat when the demon, Asmodeus, was taking control of her. While she hadn’t been violent in her spirit form before, the possibility was there. I was probably worrying too much, but Lucy hadn’t been around an animal in her current form either.